Gina Ingram is trying to avoid the endless media recaps of the spectacle and scandal that dominated the last 20 years of Michael Jackson's life.

Ingram prefers to think of a day, as a little girl, when she arrived home from school on the Northeast section of Syracuse. A family friend told her he had something she needed to hear. He helped her to put on an enormous set of headphones. In that way, she listened to "Get on the Floor," one of the songs from Jackson's groundbreaking 1979 solo album, "Off the Wall."

The music had a sound and energy unlike anything she'd experienced before. "I hear it now, and it's almost like the way they say you can remember something based on just a smell," she said Tuesday. "I hear it now, and you remember where you were, and who your friends were."

Ingram, 38, shared many of those reflections in a note to The Post-Standard. It summarized, as well as anything, the emptiness felt by so many after Jackson's death from cardiac arrest: Beyond the garish headlines of recent days and years, Jackson was the rare musician whose music was intertwined with memorable phases of everyday lives.

When Ingram was born, her mom was 17. Her dad was gone by the time she was a toddler. With her mother and older brother Zach, Ingram moved from apartment to apartment.

Once they hit school, she and Zach quickly learned what it meant to be biracial in an era when it wasn't common.

"We were considered freaks of nature," Ingram said.

Her white relatives didn't know how to handle her hair. Children routinely offered cruel comments. But Ingram's mom provided a means of escape: She handed down a love of reading to her daughter, who spent countless hours in her room, alone with books or music.

Ingram always liked Jackson's work, especially "Ben," a haunting ballad that seemed to put some of her own childhood sadness into words. In 1982, she used a battered record player to listen to Jackson's revelatory album, "Thriller." The vinyl soon became so scratched and worn that she would load pennies onto the phonograph needle to keep it from skipping.

Once school let out, Ingram and her brother would be alone until their mother finished working. "When the date and time of the 'Thriller' video (premiere) .¤.¤. was announced on MTV -- you know, when they used to play videos -- we both rushed home, made our daily snack of tea and toast and sat anxiously waiting for it to come on," Ingram wrote.

The TV was in their mother's room. They sat side by side at the foot of the bed, astounded by Jackson's zombie makeup and elaborate dance routine.

To this day, Ingram recalls the look of sheer awe she and Zach exchanged when it was over.

More than 25 years later, in the same week that Jackson died, Ingram watched as her oldest sons -- Bilahl and Jamal McGriff -- graduated from Nottingham High School. Bilahl is going into the Navy. Jamal intends to study at Morrisville State College to become a police officer, with a dream of rising to a detective's rank.

For Ingram, the ceremony carried profound meaning. Years ago, a point arrived when "you realize there's a cycle that needs to be broken," she said. She wanted her children to lead safe, productive lives. To make that happen, she surrounded herself with selfless friends. She relentlessly challenged her kids to keep achieving.

Then she said her prayers.

Last week, as she watched her sons walk the stage with their diplomas, she remembered her own childhood -- all the people who were there for her, and those who weren't. She recalled how, in the worst times, she would flee to her room, knowing she could at least count on one thing: